Friday, August 28, 2009

If you plant in it, it's a garden!

Over the years I have lived in many different places. Whether I had a big open yard space or barely a window ledge I've always planted things. I've basically left a trail of lilac bushes and lavender all over southern Ont. But until recent years my attempts at vegetable gardening was pretty much limited to herbs and the odd tomato plant.I can't honestly say when my need to putter around in the dirt became an obsession to grow food, but it has become one in a big way. One day I was planting a single tomato in a pot and next thing I know I'm growing nine kinds of heirloom tomatoes on the roof ( actually the neighbour's roof - I ran out of room on my deck). I've grown potatoes and edamame in plastic pails, peppers in an ancient mop bucket and my herb garden is an old enamel basin. But what I really craved was an actual in the ground garden - my last apartment had a cement front step and a backyard parking lot. I did quite a bit of work to improve that ( see Reclaimed Earth at http://reclaimedearth.blogspot.com/) but was leery about planting anything edible in the toxic no man's land. I was working my way towards raised beds but we were unceremoniously kicked out of that apartment when new landlords bought the building last fall. Just as well since they had already made me get rid of my compost under the pretext that it attracted rats! Seriously- what kind of self respecting city rat would be interested in rotting vegetables?

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Backyard Farms

About Me

CallieK is my online nickname and so it seems only fitting that my farmer is named Callie as well. We look a bit alike although I think my nose is smaller.
I live in downtown Toronto with my boyfriend the Russian dancer and our 3 cats. As soon as Toronto allows backyard chickens we'll be adding some of those. For now we spend most of our time building, planting things, and canning everything that will go in a jar.